Race, Trust, and Return Migration

Abstract

After several disasters in the United States, the return-migration rate of blacks to post-disaster areas has been lower than that of other races. Does this pattern have a political explanation? I investigate political trust as the causal mechanism through which race affects people’s decisions of where to live after forced evacuation. After accounting for economic, demographic, and sociological influences on return migration, I use mediation analysis to find that political trust acts as a mediator between race and return migration. I am thus able to explain the salience of race to the return-migration decision: race does not have a direct effect on return migration but rather works through the causal mechanism of political trust to determine return-migration decisions. As blacks are more likely to have low levels of political trust, and those with lower political trust are less likely to return, blacks are less likely to return to post-disaster areas.